‘Prime ministerial exits’, Honest History, 24 February 2014
Norman Abjorensen talks to Honest History about the way Australian prime ministers leave their jobs and how they feel about the process. He discusses PMs Alfred Deakin (something of a prig), Edmund Barton (not really suited to the job), James Scullin (a long time an ex-PM), Fisher and Hughes under pressure of war, and others, as well as the newspaper proprietor David Syme (the Rupert Murdoch of his day), the relations between our early prime ministers and early governors-general and whether changing the PM means changing the country. Read more…
A draft chapter from Dr Abjorensen’s book on prime ministerial exits is here: 193 Abjorensen Edmund Barton_Chapter. The chapter, on Barton’s exit, is called ‘Tobias Hamlet and the long goodbye’ and the working title of the book is The Manner of Their Going: Prime Ministerial Exits in Australia.
At the other end of prime ministerial careers, Michelle Grattan lectures about some of their first years.